The surface paint finishes of new vehicles and other articles of manufacture are subject to a variety of injuries both during the assembly process, during transportation from the assembly plant to retail locations, during installation, repair, maintenance, and the like. Various finishes on articles of manufacture are especially prone to damage during manufacture or in the first month following manufacture because the paint or plastic surfaces have not had sufficient time to cure. Typical sources of damage include, but are not limited to, impact, scratches, marring, dirt, oil, abrasive particles that rise from a rail bed or a highway, salt that occurs in the air near shore locations (e.g., cargo loading areas), paint overspray (e.g., in autobody shops), sandstorms, chemical exposure, ultraviolet light exposure, and the like. Rail dust and salt damage are especially difficult problems for car manufacturers as many cars and other vehicles are transported from assembly plants or dockyards to retail markets by rail of by sea. The damage inflicted on the vehicles' surface finish during transit can be quite severe, even requiring shipment back to the assembly plant for complete repainting.
In addition to vehicles, other products are also subjected to abrasive and deleterious conditions during transit, and during fabrication and assembly into other products. For instance, storm windows and other glass products must be specially protected to avoid scratching and marring during road and rail transit. Deck cargo is also susceptible to surface damage caused by salt water and other factors. Similarly, many products must be protected during fabrication or assembly by downstream manufacturers. For example, plastic laminates such as FORMICA®, composites (e.g., fiberglass, Kevlar, and the like), and other materials with high-gloss finishes such as bathroom fixtures and chrome plated or brass surfaces must be protected not only during shipping, but during installation or assembly into other products.
Various approaches have been utilized to protect the exposed surfaces of vehicles, vehicle components, and other products during manufacture and transportation. The simplest approach, physical protection with solid coatings (e.g., covering the vehicle or component with plastic or canvas) has various levels of effectiveness and is labor intensive and often prohibitively expensive for mass shipments. Plastic sheeting, for example, is often as much as ten times more expensive to use than chemical coating solutions due to higher material costs and the amount of labor needed to properly apply the sheetings. In addition it is difficult, time consuming and sometimes virtually impossible to apply solid sheet coatings to complex or convoluted surfaces.
Solution-type protective compositions are known, but have not found widespread use because of the damage that may possibly occur to the underlying or adjacent surfaces. These compositions are often difficult to remove from certain surfaces (e.g., underlying plastics). Also, traditional chemical methods suffer from high cost and the health and environmental dangers posed by solvent-based solutions and coatings.
Aqueous emulsion type coatings are also easily applied and eliminate the problems associated with various organic solvent systems. The most widely used are polyvinyl acetate emulsions or acrylic resin emulsions. These emulsions, however, are defective with respect to adhesion, flexibility and/or removability over a range of temperatures, resistance to water, and stability in storage, and low drying velocity after application. In addition many coatings tend to become very difficult to remove particularly after exposure to sunlight (UV radiation) or elevated temperature.
The term “consisting essentially of” when used with reference to a coating composition as described indicates that the invention includes the listed ingredients and is open to unlisted ingredients that do not materially affect the basic and novel properties of the invention. Thus additional ingredients are permissible that do not substantially diminish the protective ability and/or the peelability of the composition.